Recently got a right-wing chain email reading simply “How do you like my new car? The silly thing cost $226,000 and does 13 mpg in the city and 18 on hiway. No hybrid here!!!”
with the following two pictures. I know enough about cars to tell that this one is made by Ferrari. Anyone know more about what the hell this email is going on about?
Yup, it is a Ferrari California.
And no, the California is not fancy when compared to other more hardcore Ferrari cars like the F430, the Enzo or the FXX
Hmm- guessing it has something to do with either Cash for Clunkers, and/or the Chrysler & GM bailout. IF you divide the $30 billion or so in taxpayers money by the number of cars the two companies sell this year, then it comes out to $266K.
Upon preview, maybe not.
Is there something about the email that attributes it to 'the right wing?"
WAG: A lot of right-wingers are really REALLY upset about mileage regulations. In the minds of [some] right-wingers, higher mileage requirements lead to smaller cars, less-safe cars, cars with less horsepower, yada yada yada. Such regulations are a slap in the face of the FREEDOM to drive WHATEVER THE FUCK I PLEASE, environmental regulations be damned! So driving a $266K sports car that gets 13mpg is basically dick-waving in the face of higher gas-mileage regulations. IOW: Screw you and your 30-mpg eco-friendly rice burner. My car gets 13mpg! PBHTHTHTHHH!!! waves dick
Note: I’m not advocating the position expressed here ^ , just describing it.
A lot of right wingers are really upset at the cowardice involved in the current mileage regulations. If you really want to control fuel economy, the correct way is by using the cost of fuel to control consumer behavior, not by regulating what the manufacturer can produce.
Someone I know once put it to me thusly: CAFE regulations are like trying to control obesity by telling the folks who make men’s pants that they have to average out to a 32 inch waist.
[Devil’s Advocate] Anyone who can afford the Ferrari doesn’t even FEEL the price of gas for his personal vehicle, whereas the guy who has to drive the 87 Ford Taurus will have to walk if gas so much as doubles in price. [/Devil’s Advocate]
Which, interestingly, might be a good way to control obesity.
Cash for clunkers was not $30 bil, it was $3 bil.
Taking what Inigo said even one step further, I’d argue that practically ALL new car buyers are not seriously financially affected by the price of gas. After all, what’s even an extra couple of hundred bucks in gas compared to the thousands in depreciation the first year?
So, to follow the pants analogy, it would be more like if people who could afford to buy new pants tended to buy more 42’s, but people who can only afford buying used pants (which are most people) want 32’s. So they’re stuck buying 42’s and they are forced to become obese in order for thier pants to fit (that’s the idea, right?).
Seriously, though, the deal with most right-wingers isn’t that they don’t like HOW the government is trying to reduce fuel consupmtion-- they resent that they’re trying to do it at all. Many of them reject the basic premises that say that we need to reduce consumption (climate change, peak oil, etc) and others might accept them, but simply reject the idea of government intervention.
Since this is GQ, I am going to avoid the topic of what right-wingers do or do not like, and simply state that using fuel surcharges is a better way to control fuel economy than forcing the manufacturers to build a bunch of cars they are going to lose money on so they can sell the cars the customer really wants to buy.
I have no idea what you did to my pants analogy, but you appear to have completely missed the idea. There are plenty of used, crappy econoboxes out there because they have to sell them very cheap. In the pants analogy, there would be a ton of size 25 waist pants in the used market because they would have to practically give them away in order to meet the average requirement. So poor people wouldbn’t need to get fatter to find pants, they could simply starve themselves – why not, they were already starving anyhow! – and get practically free pants made for very skinny people. Forcing them to practically give away the pants on the low end means the price on the pants that people actually wear must be higher to make up for it.
Which is why all those people are clamoring for a high fuel tax? :rolleyes:
One’s an actual expense that real people have to pay out of their pockets, and the other is an imaginary loss based on the [del]idiotic[/del] notion that a significant number of people view their cars as an investment and plan to resell them within a year of buying them?
Just guessing.
Well, mostly I was trying to say that the controlling obesity via pants-control doesn’t make sense because pants don’t make you fat, but cars do make you use more or less fuel. I agree that the subsidized used size 25’s would be how things would work under an ideally functioning CAPS (corporate average pants size) scheme, but without such a control scheme the used pants market would be glutted with the kinds of pants only the sorts who buy new pants buy.
There’s certainly psychological and political factors, since obviously people DO buy fuel efficient cars (and even ones like the Prius where you pay a premium for it), but from a strictly financial point of view it makes no little sense to do so.
The car is nothing special. I don’t like the style at all.
Thanks for the input, everyone. I’m used to incoherent right-wing emails from this particular family member, but this one was more incoherent than most and had me befuddled.
Much obliged.
We already had a bunch of extremists who hated anything the federal government “imposed”. They ran a place called the Confederate States of America. How’d that work out for them?
That little horsey on the grille is worth an extra $200,000. That’s what’s so special.
:rolleyes:
It’s safe to say that a Toyota Corolla, which will pound out 150,000 miles like it’s nothing, will burn more fossil fuel in its lifetime than any automobile costing a quarter of a million U.S. dollars, such as the Ferrari.
It’s not uncommon for these cars to be driven less than 20,000 miles over their entire life.
Further, it is our civic duty as citizens of the United States to burn through all the fossil fuels before the rest of the world gets a chance. At least we have pollution/emissions standards and burn fuel with some degree of responsibility.
I see fossil fuel as something that will always be economical and always be harvested and burned, but I don’t see much evidence that India, China or other countries are going to do it responsibly.